Tracey Farren A small group of residents is trying its best to halt what is otherwise an extremely successful housing project in Vrygrond, the Western Cape’s oldest squatter settlement. It is not completely clear what the motive is behind the murders and threats that mar the steady stream of brick houses going up among the dunes near Lavender Hill, Cape Town. What is clear is that, as Jonathan Schrire, the chair of the Vrygrond Development Trust, says: “People kill for houses.” A total of 600 of the 1E200 planned houses are up and two trust members are dead. Several other attempts have been made on the lives of members whose mission it is to bring homes to a population of about 7E000. An understanding of the history of the settlement is crucial to any attempt to decipher the fury and fear that reign in Vrygrond.
Yvonne Baard, a member of the Vygrond Development Trust, was born in Vrygrond. She remembers how 50 years ago hunger was rare, the residents grew their own vegetables and kept their own livestock. She remembers how they fetched drinking water from the nearby cemetery, and the tyranny of the pass laws. To conceal their part-African identities, she and her siblings were forbidden to speak Xhosa outside the house. Their mother kept a stone on the stove with a bit of engine grease on hand for them to press the curls out of their hair, lest the police should arrive with their metal combs to test for “bantu” blood. Baard remembers the helpless rage of the community in the 1970s when the city council demanded that they shunt their shacks closer to Lavender Hill to make way for a golf course that never materialised. They lost their land, the livelihood of most, during the move. During the 1980s the residents of Marina da Gama fought to have them moved, but with the support of the church and an NGO, the New World Foundation, they won their battle to stay. The approximately 1 000 families continued to live in rough shelters, getting their water from 20 public taps and having their toilet buckets emptied once a week by the council. After the 1994 elections, members of the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) Forum and South African National Civics’ Organisation (Sanco) clashed too much to achieve any improvements, but in 1995 RDP Forum leaders Trevor Siljeur and Thys Witbooi pulled off a coup for Vrygrond. They used the proposal for the building of the Capricorn business park next to Vrygrond to extract the concession of 52ha of land from the Cape Town city council. Near the end of 1996, the Vrygrond Development Trust was set up, consisting of a carefully balanced combination of people from Sanco and the RDP group. In July 1997 three of the five Sanco members in the trust, Samuel “Danger” Kumalo, Gary Adriaanse and Sol Ben stormed out of the trust. They insisted that only one firm, a white company called BKS Project Managers, would be able to deliver an adequate quality of work while the rest of the trust (including two Sanco members) voted to award some of the work to “non-white” firms. The walkout marked the beginning of lethal tensions in Vrygrond. In September 1997 Siljeur’s shack was burnt down. Several Sanco members were arrested and charged with arson and incitement to riot, and later released on bail. Despite Sanco resistance, virtually every family in Vrygrond, with the help of trustees like Siljeur, applied for a subsidy from the provincial housing board. In 1998 R27-million was approved for Vrygrond’s development. The people moved their shacks to make way for bulldozers and graders once more, but this time with the prospect of flush toilets, running water and electricity. The men who had left the trust, joined by the then chair of the Vrygrond branch of the African National Congress, Jeremiah Thile, and their 50 to 100 followers, tried legal and illegal means to prevent the houses from going up. They disrupted public meetings, locked the trust office several times and threatened the developers and the trust members with violence. The builders, Ubuntu, and the South Peninsula municipality obtained a court interdict against them to stop them from obstructing the development. In October 1999 Siljeur’s shack was burnt down again. He and his daughter were injured in the fire. On December 16, hours after toasting the handover of the first 20 new houses to Vrygrond families, three bullets were fired into Siljeur’s chest, killing him. Mokasandile Godolo, purportedly a cousin of Kumalo, was arrested for the attack. He was released on bail, but some residents claim that he still possesses a firearm. Siljeur was buried in the cemetery where the first Vrygrond residents fetched their water. On May 11 trust member Freddy Jacobs opened his door to a gunman in a balaclava. He got off lightly with a bullet in his arm, but on July 21 trust member Eddie Klaasens was shot 27 times in the head and chest. No arrests have been made for the murder and trustees say that the police seem to be shifting the case around. They are concerned that the complex background information to the murder is lost every time the case is taken over by a new police official. Kumalo also expresses disgust at the fact that some people are forced to pull down their shacks and rebuild them on a new site. Trustees explain that only people who earn less than R1E500 a month qualify for the full government subsidy of R18E000 – R9E000 of which covers the earthworks and the installation of services. People who earn more than R1E500, who have a house elsewhere in the country, who have previously received a subsidy or do not have dependents, do not qualify for the full subsidy. These people are, however, assured of a fully serviced site on which to build their own houses. Trustees say that they plan to try and raise additional building funds for them. It is alleged that Klaasens was killed for selling houses to newcomers, disregarding the waiting list and pocketing the cash. Trustees describe the charge as ludicrous. The housing board determines who qualifies and this information is handed to the South Peninsula municipality and the project managers. The project managers oversee the occupation and the house is not released unless the list is honoured and the new house signed for.
ENDS